Amusing Computer Pranks

A harmless prank is always fun, and the computer is no safe zone from playful mischief. Whether it's a colleague or a friends or even a significant other you are playing a trick on, please keep in mind that not everyone is comfortable around a computer. So if you choose to play one of these great pranks, make sure you stick around to set things right before the fun turns into fury.

A true classic computer prank is the static desktop trick. To pull of this prank simply take a screenshot of the desktop. Save the image using paint or Photoshop and set it as the background image. You can take a screenshot by pressing the Print Screen (or PRTSC) button. Make sure no programs are open when you take the screenshot. To finish off the prank, right click on the desktop and select 'Arrange Desktop Icons'. In the sub menu un-check the 'Show Desktop Icons' option.

This classic prank is still a lot of fun. To make the prank even more hilarious you can open a web browser and navigate to a page with compromising content before you take the screenshot. Then find a spot to snicker as your victim frantically tries to close the window.

Another highly annoying an thus super amusing prank is to add bogus auto correction entries in Word. The auto correction menu is found in the tools menu. Here you can create rules that will automatically change a word to something else. Adding rules that change a correctly spelled word to a similar word is often the most hilarious. Consider rules like changing all occurrences of 'three' to 'tree', 'meet' to 'meat' and so on. This prank will make any writing task a nightmare for your selected target.

Another classic target for computer pranks is the mouse. There are a number of things you can do to the mouse settings to mess with your friends. One of the most common is to change the layout to a left handed mouse in the mouse settings. This way a right click becomes a left click. For more sophisticated mouse pranks change the mouse cursor. Pick as many tasks as you can and set the mouse cursor to be the hour glass. This will make it seem as if the computer is constantly working.

Other tricks include removing the tracking ball in an old school mouse or taping over the sensor of a more modern optical mouse. Finally, in the mouse settings you can set the double click speed to the maximum. For almost any user this will make double clicks virtually impossible.

If mouse trickery is not your thing, the keyboard is another excellent candidate for some shenanigans. A very funny but labor intensive prank is to remove a few of the keys and change the position around. This works excellent for people who look at the keyboard while typing. Be careful when doing this prank as the joke is considerably less funny if you break the keyboard in the process.

You can create keyboard mayhem without physically altering the key layout. Simply go into the keyboard settings in the control panel and change the keyboard layout. Changing the default language can be funny enough, but a even better layout is to change to dvorak layout. This will make it appear that all the keys have shifted their position.

With this arsenal of tricks you are well equipped to be the office prankster. Before you spread general jolly and cheers in the office with a myriad of tricks, you might want to lock your own computer and save all important work. Remember that what goes around comes around is never truer than when it comes to pranks.